Diversity For Thee, But Not For Me

I’ve said this before but conservatives often perceive liberal attachment to diversity as a kind of “everyone’s a winner” cuddle party, where we sit around exchanging rice-cakes and hating on the military. But the great strength of diversity is it forces you into a room with people who have experiences very different from your own. It’s all fine and good to laugh at Sherrod Brown dancing to Jay-Z. But dude is outside his lane and he’s learning something. M.C. Rove should be so lucky.

TNC’s point that we benefit from learning perspectives different from ours is perfectly valid, even anodyne. But it’s simply untrue that “diversity” in practice means what liberals say it means. If liberals meant what they said, they would push for “diversity” to include political conservatives, Southern Baptists, and others unlike themselves. How often does that happen? It seems that “diversity” only applies to racial and sexual minorities. Conservatives understand perfectly well that the concept of diversity is an ideological construct that implicitly marginalizes them. That is the essence of the conservative resistance to “diversity” — that it’s a racket and a sham. TNC’s post prescribes diversity to conservatives to get them to be less “stupid,” and again, I agree that it’s always good to try to understand the perspective of others. But: every conservative has heard liberals say incredibly ignorant, stupid, untrue things about conservatives, but one rarely hears liberals worry about their own epistemic closure resulting from their monocultural liberalism. As I’ve written here before, conservatives are extremely wary when they hear calls for “diversity” and for “racial dialogue,” not because either is a bad thing in and of itself, but because they are code words for, “We liberals are going to tell you conservatives why you are wrong, and what we expect you to do about it.”

I would say that half, and maybe even most, of my friends in my Red-America town are liberals. We never talk about politics, and if we did, I bet we could have an intelligent exchange, because we see each other as people, not ideological constructs. Living in a small town compels you to see the other as a subject, not an object. It doesn’t make you a more moral person, necessarily, but at least it gives you more opportunity to see people as more than the sum of their ideological commitments.

I have never learned a thing from official diversity programs, except to be extremely cynical. What I’ve learned from living among people not like myself is to be more careful in the judgments I make — and to separate the political beliefs of a person from my assessment of that person’s character. I’ve learned the truth of Solzhenitsyn’s observation that the line between good and evil runs down the middle of each person’s heart. As a political and cultural conservative living in New York City, and working in newsrooms, which are overwhelmingly liberal environments, I’ve learned what it’s like to be an outsider. But I’ve also learned, I think and I hope, to see how one’s outsiderness can corrupt one’s judgment as well. I have learned a lot about how people are basically the same, and how people really are different in some consequential ways.

The point is that learning to see the world as it is does not result in adopting one ideological platform or another, but rather training oneself to see the complexity in society, and within individuals, and to render judgments based on a more empathic understanding of how people are, and why they think the things they do. Too many people assume that those who believe the opposite things arrive at their convictions in bad faith, e.g., out of bigotry, malice, desire for personal gain, etc. It’s true for some, but true less often than you might think. This is not to say that becoming more widely exposed to different people makes you into an automatic egalitarian, or a liberal (or a conservative), but it should make you more discerning in your own approach to the world, and quicker to question yourself.

It could well be the case that being exposed to the Other hardens one in one’s dislike for them. We shouldn’t assume that “diversity” automatically leads to more tolerance, wisdom, and comity. I once knew a guy from Europe who lived for a while in America, and was glad to go home. He got to know a lot of Americans, and appreciated our good qualities, but in the end he felt like an alien here, and found that the bad aspects of our culture outweighed the good. I think that’s a shame, but I didn’t begrudge him that judgment. He thought ours was an inferior culture — and given the things he valued most of all, he was right. I can live with that. Can’t you?

Now, now, M_Young, you’re using a “disparate impact” argument. Just because more “white” people are dying than are being born doesn’t mean…

Turmarion, as he often does, offers the voice of sweet reason and passionate objectivity. Thank you. I love your state, and most of the people in it, including they guy I used to chat with selling guns at the flea market.

This discussion doesn’t seem to have much dialog to it. This is one of those times we all face in various different directions and shout something to the stars, who are, as far as we know, supremely indifferent to our little opinions.

johan, I can testify from personal knowledge that pentecostal churches and other churches that are predominantly made up from people of African descent do sing the hymns of Isaac Watts, and pay attention to Wesleyan teachings. (I mean, this isn’t Pentecostal, although they’re getting more like it, but you do know that two of the largest African denominations are African METHODIST, right? There are also Lutheran churches organized by German immigrant farmers that have been able to sit in neighborhoods that turned first urban working class, then urban black working class, then urban pathologically run-down inner city, and soaked up people from the neighborhood who love the liturgy and everything.

The problem is, most people who choose to think of themselves as “white” don’t try it.

Well, PERSONAL conservatives are in fact part of the Democratic coalition unless I am mistaken… Quite a few minority voters do attend religious services regularly and the emphasize the importance of family and community over that of the needs of the individual. Yet they seem to coexist quite happily with the white liberal secular “elite” which arguably controls the Democratic party.

Rod & co. sometimes accuse Democrats of being anti-religious. Actually, the religious are welcome as long as they do not try to force their one-size-fits-all sexual or religious morality onto everybody else. This is the GOP’s current problem, that minorities believe it is an exclusive male white Christian southern club which is at best indifferent and at worst hostile towards the cultural and economic needs of Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant”.

Re: After all, today we found out that after 4 years of Obama recession, the desire effect of having whites actually start to die off has become a reality.

In what alternate universe? In this one mortality rates among black folk are still higher than among white folk.
If you are referring to a semi-recent study that found higher mortality rates among low income people (note “people”) that’s about income, not race.

“In what alternate universe? In this one mortality rates among black folk are still higher than among white folk.”

We have had a ‘jobless’ recovery– it is quiet well known that economic hard times suppresses birth rate.* Yet, despite persistent high unemployment, neither the President or, it should be said, the GOP, has even broached the idea of restricting immigration giving young US workes, the majority of which are still white, the economic security to start families.

*It is an interesting question whether black and native-born Hispanic birth rates are *as* effected by economic swings as the white rate. I suspect no, simply because larger proportions of those groups rely on government largess, and single motherhood is higher among those groups. But I don’t know for sure.

The problem here is that insanity is not an acceptable form of diversity among liberals. It is among conservatives. Call it an unbridgeable cultural difference.

You have liberals announcing that convicted murderers ahve the right to a state-funded sex change operation. You have the Massachusetts government trying everything possible not to release information on welfare fraud.

You have Major Nidal Hussan getting paid while in jail, while the families of the people he killed are not getting the benefits of one who died from terrorist acts, because the Obama administration refuses to admit that political Islam is in any was related to the shooting.

You’ve had opposition to gay marriage touted as “extremism” long before any state actually legalized gay marriage through the legislature or referendum – in other words, a very popular, majoritarian position was derided as “extreme.”

I’m a liberal–and I embrace diversity–mainly because I believe in fundamental standards of meritocracy–that ability, rather than random/arbitrary/inherited characteristics should determine one’s fate.

I always thought this was a rather conservative idea–well, not really OLD-SCHOOL Ancien regime conservative–but American Conservatism–with it’s belief in free-markets, competition and the like.

Diversity should truly be a conservative gold-mine–where people are judged by hard work and ability–not by skin color or anything else.

But that is no what “diversity” means. It is belief in the inclusion of proportionate numbers of all groups regardless of merit. “Diversity” is all about judging people by the “color of their skin” (i.e. race), their ethnic background, etc., it just does so by a diverse rather than a monocultural standard.

Re: At the time, I wondered if this diversification was only one direction – was the local black pentecostal church singing songs by Luther, Watts, Wesley?

I haven’t really ever been to a ‘Black Church’ (my home parish in Boston, though the congregation is about two-thirds African-American or Caribbean-American, is a traditional Anglo-Catholic church rather than a traditionally ‘Black Church’). I occasionally flip to one of the Black Evangelical stations on my radio, though, or listen to one of the ‘urban’ stations on Sunday. If those are representative at all, then it would seem like a lot of Black Christians quite like the songs of Watts (possibly Wesley too), as well as the literary efforts of those dead white guys who wrote the King James Version.

Re: There are also Lutheran churches organized by German immigrant farmers that have been able to sit in neighborhoods that turned first urban working class, then urban black working class, then urban pathologically run-down inner city, and soaked up people from the neighborhood who love the liturgy and everything.

Lutherans are very big in Africa, as well. Including in the country where I worked for about three years. IIRC the lagrest proportion of practicing Lutherans (as a percent of population) is in the southern African country of Namibia, a former German colony.

Re: “No one has mentioned this, but the diversity push is about reversing or mitigating differences in relative power. White/non-white, male/female, Christian/non-Christian, hetero/non-hetero — each of those binaries has a dominant polarity, and for each the push for diversity is about bringing that non-dominant polarity toward parity. As a white male Christian hetero, I understand that that doesn’t exactly reinforce my awesomeness, but I think somehow I’ll be okay. (Guess that makes me a quisling, according to another commenter’s formula.)”

I notice you don’t pay attention to the fundamental ‘polarity’ in our society (and most others), rich vs. poor. That’s okay though. Like many cultural liberals, your preoccupation seems to be identity politics rather than class. Understandably so, that way the limousine cultural liberals can feel righteous that they to a church with a lesbian woman pastor (unlike the dumb reactionaries) and not feel so bad about all the unexamined economic and class privilege they enjoy.

I agree that race is a big issue in our society, and that Black and Latino people face serious social injustice, but this isn’t simply an issue of white vs. nonwhite. Some minority groups like Indians, Jews and Chinese-Americans enjoy a far more privileged status than whites do, and shouldn’t be allowed to portray themselves as oppressed by the white power structure or whatever silliness the Ivy League English departments are churning out today.

As for gender, do you seriously think that our society is ‘male dominated’, or that women don’t get a fair shake? To the extent that women are less likely to be politicians, physicists or business owners, that’s got very little to do with ‘discrimination’, and more to do with innate biology. Women are, on the average, less likely to be interested and/or qualified to take those positions, though there are of course many individual exceptions.

But: every conservative has heard liberals say incredibly ignorant, stupid, untrue things about conservatives, but one rarely hears liberals worry about their own epistemic closure resulting from their monocultural liberalism.

That’s the point: all of this criticism about conservatives for their “epistemic closure” and the implication that liberals are more open-minded, ignores the fundamental reality that liberal epistemic closure gets written into the culture so that no one questions it. That’s what “political correctness” is, the mainstreaming of liberal epistemic closure. It’s not that they are more open-minded, it’s just that when liberals are close-minded their opinions become enshrined as “truth.”

I am a Negro and do well enough in “diverse” situations, I find many cultures and styles of thought interest and can fun interacting with with. But generally what people calls annoys me on a few levels. I don’t think I should be required to find any culture interesting or worthy interaction. Things can rub me wrong and as long as I dont attack anyone, I shouldn’t be demonized. I also dislike the idea that being around only people like you (culturally or racially).

There are a lot of “minority” folk who are politically conservative and religious.

This article seems to be premised on the idea that liberal = minorities and/or non-religious people who view the world in dichotomies, and these people who are invariably liberal, minorities, and irreligious are demanding everyone else to listen to them. And then the article concludes by saying the reality is more complex than that.

The operant pattern, of course, is that it is republican politicians who are clearly the ones who have never left their minuscule, isolated cultural bubble.

The influence of talk radio and the destruction of community bonds, particularly among men who lack any significant friendships outside of immediate friendships and whatever beliefs they are told to hold by their employers or supervisors means that they exist in an echo chamber reminiscent of the French Revolution where the only sin is to refuse to take up ever-more-extreme right wing beliefs in service to “the cause.”

dominic1955 wrote: “Sorry pal, it doesn’t get any dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks than that pearl.”

I have to agree with you on this. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

However, I still think there is a false equivalency because of the prevalence of how entrenched the stupidity is among conservatives as opposed to liberals. Todd Akin said women don’t get pregnant through rape. We all know that is pure idiocy and many people (including Republicans) harshly condemned him for it. Yet, this kind of stupidity is still believed among conservatives.

I will gladly change my view if Rep. DeGette continues to make this stupid comment, or if other liberals start picking up on that theme. That won’t happen though because there’s far less resistance to facts among liberals than among conservatives at this stage of our history. DeGette will, and should, continue to oppose large magazine clips, but she’s not going to base her argument on this kind of stupidity again. However, many conservatives will continue to oppose a rape exception for abortion based on the stupid belief that rape can’t cause pregnancy.

Mr. Dreher, I’ve got to say that you are being pretty unfair to TNC. As a reader of his blog, you know that he is constantly exposing himself to those who aren’t like him, be it his exploration of civil war reenactments, spending time in rural areas of Tennessee and so forth. It is one thing to throw the “liberal definition of diversity” label on a person who doesn’t walk it, but it just doesn’t apply to TNC.

And if you’re going to attack someone for using codewords like diversity, you probably shouldn’t invoke conservative codewords like New York City and liberal newsrooms. There are plenty of cultural and social conservatives in New York City, especially if you travel to the other boroughs. And a conservative can also work at the New York Post or Fox and feel more than comfortable.

But instead of sitting around throwing crap at each other trying to point out hypocrisy, we could give folks the benefit of the doubt, especially when their track record warrants that and try to actually move the conversation forward.

Where in the vast landscape of syndicated talk radio are genuinely right-wing positions ever even advanced? I have co-workers and relatives who’ve listened to Rush and some of the local New England guys (Rush imitators with non-rhotic accents) and all I hear are the same obnoxious wedge issues hammered continuously between nauseatingly enthusiastic endorsements of nominally right-wing establishment politicians.

I also don’t see how analogies to the French Revolution obtain when talk radio is still firmly mired in the comfortable irrelevancies of the neo-con naughties. It’s all about as shocking as Slate, perpetuated to the elderly through a dead medium, no less.

“If liberals meant what they said, they would push for “diversity” to include political conservatives, Southern Baptists, and others unlike themselves.”

A quick check of just the democratic delegation from Georgia returns 4 Congressmen who identify as Baptist. There’s also one who identifies as Buddhist.

Please help me with what a political conservative is. Is it someone against abortion and gay marriage? Is it someone against unnecessary wars? Is it someone against budget deficits? Is someone against big government or big corporations?

This post seems to be making excuses for the Republican party’s failure to gain support the diverse collection of people that are the actual American in the United States instead of the fantastical claim that it represents Real America….

I find those things you cite defensible and mostly correct. Because while I can identify monsters and crazy people, I’m for treating them as people to the extent their behavior permits and compatible with compassion.

There are two signs of insanity I am certain of. One is the behavior of say “X is unacceptably crazy and irredeemable, we must kill him/them now.” The other is the behavior of saying “My tribe and I are precious beyond all others, we must reproduce in large numbers and it is our holy duty to so (as well as overcome and eventually extinct you and yours).”

“It seems that ”diversity” only applies to racial and sexual minorities. Conservatives understand perfectly well that the concept of diversity is an ideological construct that implicitly marginalizes them.”

Not sure why you decided that people who appreciate diversity is the same as official diversity programs (whatever that means). If you have observed the GOP the past decade, anything that encourages persons other than older white males is not popular.

Two thoughts. It sounds like you are willing to have conservatives abandon diversity because liberals misuse the concept as a club against you and implement it poorly. Why? Wouldn’t liberals do better to create space for pro-life liberals and evangelical liberals? Why diminish your own club because liberals have been jerks to you? Why not challenge fellow conservatives to do diversity better than liberals?

Secondly, you use your own experience with liberal friends to challenge TNC. Isn’t is safe to say, in general terms, you’re not exactly part of the movement conservative flock? I’m not sure how germane your friendships are to TNC’s point.

That’s because we are listening to you. And not just for mockery’s sake. I earnestly wanted to learn something, and I have. I think the RINOs are deeply interesting– you, Larison, Frum, and so forth have great ideas.

But as long as the bulk of conservatism remains deeply committed to a nihilist vision of America as they wish it to be, rather than as it is, the only thing we can do is continue to apply pressure.

Like many cultural liberals, your preoccupation seems to be identity politics rather than class.

Amen, Hector! The cultural liberals will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes (to borrow a phrase from A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). But seriously, cultural preoccupations when people are living in poverty is revolting. Dom Helder Camarra, ora pro nobis.

M_Young, not one of those nihilists you cited is a liberal. Not one. Most are anarchists. Some had delusions of being communists, but couldn’t make the grade.

Chris 1, I’ll see your three awesome in-laws. I could raise you if we count the kids, but I bet you could see me right back.

“But it’s simply untrue that “diversity” in practice means what liberals say it means. If liberals meant what they said, they would push for “diversity” to include political conservatives, Southern Baptists, and others unlike themselves.”

Rod, you completely mischaracterized TNC’s point by taking the buzzword ‘diversity’ out of context. He’s talking about a diversity of experience, not of politics – people of different backgrounds who approach things from a perspective you may not be familiar with. Plenty of ‘liberals’ grew up in Southern Baptist homes, and are very familiar with that perspective.

Chris 1, M_Young said that whites were “dying off,” not that their mortality rate had increased. A decrease in fertility that results in deaths exceeding births counts as “dying off” in my opinion. I would think that if an endangered species stopped reproducing, you would consider that “dying off.”

And I have a Korean sister-in-law (one half-Koran nephew), a Puerto Rican sister-in-law (a niece and a nephew from her), and a half-black first cousin once removed (no in-law; the father is not in the picture).

“Conservatives understand perfectly well that the concept of diversity is an ideological construct that implicitly marginalizes them.”

This is nonsense on two levels. One, where is the “ideological” component to the concept that racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientation diversity should be celebrated and not demonized as inferior to some”other” norm. If you say “the concept of diversity . . . implicitly marginalizes” conservatives, then aren’t you implicitly saying conservative thought is for Whites only, for example? Aren’t you saying that conservatives find diversity distasteful, as opposed to the other way around? I think you are saying both things.

And I am reminded of a poster in powerlineblog last week lamenting the Cheerios commercial with the biracial girl pouring cereal on her sleeping dad’s chest; the poster, a conservatives, called that “shoving diversity down our throats.” Is diversity . . . having people different than you around you THAT DISTASTEFUL to conservatives that they feel “marginalized” if not attacked if they have to deal with people who are different? If so, the often nutty hatred on the right for Obama makes even more sense.

And I am reminded of a poster in powerlineblog last week lamenting the Cheerios commercial with the biracial girl pouring cereal on her sleeping dad’s chest; the poster, a conservatives, called that “shoving diversity down our throats.”

And then there are the culture vultures infatuated with blackness who complained that the Danon Yogurt commercials showing a mixed-race group of women talking about the virtues of the brand are not an accurate reflection of American life, because most people only associate socially with others of their own color.

To both I would ask, “So what?”

The mix of people in the world is real. There is no more reason NOT to feature a mixed-race child or mixed social company than to ONLY feature such scenarios. As a practical matter, since advertising agencies are now trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible (yes, black Americans have money to spend, and advertising clients want those dollars), for the least expenditure, mixed race appeals make economic sense, up to a point.

Anyway, since when do advertisements accurately reflect daily life for most Americans anyway?

The point is that the idea of ‘gender diversity’ implicitly assumes that men and women are really not very a different from each other, and that they don’t have innately different talents and interests. That isn’t a worldview that cultural conservatives (or, really, most sensible people) are likely to accept.

Coates is discussing something specific– the plague of GOP politicians saying horrible things about rape. This post skips the specific point Coates is making about engaging with people with different views. There isn’t much in the way of specifics in this post.

The larger issue is, there is a historical context that makes promoting familiarity with minority cultures a very different thing than talking up conservative Southern Baptists. On the policy implications of that history, there’s plenty of room for good-faith debate. But if one is of the view that a state allowing gay marriage is the destruction of the family, one ought to also engage with the literal destruction of families that went on in this country for centuries.

“Racism ended in the 1960s, the real racism is talking about racism” is an attitude at odds with the general perspective that our roots matter.

“Todd Akin said women don’t get pregnant through rape. We all know that is pure idiocy and many people (including Republicans) harshly condemned him for it. Yet, this kind of stupidity is still believed among conservatives. ”

Just what dimension are you coming from? I love the twighlight Zone, but these comments are from somewhere else.

That is not what Mr. Akin said, nor was that what was meant. He suggested something supported by some study. And it is actually a compliment in every way, to the uniue nature of womens biology. In short, a woman’s body when forced to engage in sexual relations at some level engages in self protection against pregnancy. That is all — itr was nothing more than that and nothing less. The research seems to support this advance and shortly after the elections sveral physicians have actually supported it.

It was hullabaloo about nothing. There was no offense. There was none intended. The incidence of preganancy after a rape is rare — he posited a suggestion as to why — it does not mean that women who are rape and get pregnant were not raped — l’est you liberal mind exit into a slim thread of an already warped reality.

So unless you care to name a Republican who believes that that mush less a plural number — might be nice to adhereto some silence on the matter.

But what is most curious that liberals who cry out for diversity — seem incapble of handling ideas that don’t fit their mantra and seek to destroy in no unceratain terms anyone who isn’t haning out free condoms and supporting free abortions . . . .

The incidence of pregnancy after a rape is rare — he posited a suggestion as to why — it does not mean that women who are rape and get pregnant were not raped — l’est you liberal mind exit into a slim thread of an already warped reality.

If you consider a 5% rate of pregnancy to be rare, then it is rare…

The Facts

Because of the violence and stigma associated with rape — as well as different definitions — there are a wide range of statistics concerning rape. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, estimates that nearly 1.3 million American women were victims of rape or attempted rape in 2010. (About half were actual rapes.) But RAINN, the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, says about 64,000 women were raped between 2004-2005, citing Justice Department data.

Obviously, the number of rapes will make a huge difference in the number of rapes that result in pregnancy. But Franks spoke of “incidence,” which suggests he is speaking about the rate of pregnancy.

The most widely cited study of this question (embedded below) was published in 1996 by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which determined a national rape-related pregnancy rate of 5.0 percent per rape among victims between the ages of 12 and 45. The study was based on a survey of 4008 adult women, over a three-year period, which covered a range of questions on drug and alcohol abuse but also included questions intended to draw out information on sexual assaults.

A national probability sample of 4008 adult American women took part in a 3-year longitudinal survey that assessed the prevalence and incidence of rape and related physical and mental health outcomes.
RESULTS:

The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.

First of all while I appreciate the rape studies I would need to know their definition of rape. The methodology. I am dubious about studies that use anything other than crime stats.

In that probabilty study these cases of rape reported as crimes? Or was the woman;s word good enough?

Ohhh and 5% is rare. But I find this number suspect.

“Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. ” Up until you you refernce often I am ok with most of this — but a numerical study — just what is the occurance of often and how is that relevant to pregnancy. And were thes e multiple encounters or one time. If one time I would really find the numbers suspect.

But let’s examine these numbers according to the FBI there were 80000 forcible rapes — the new definition — in 2008 5% of that number is 4000 if I calculated itcorrectly. That is 4 pregnancies per 80000 cases.
But the expanded rape numbers via survey data puts the number of rapes according to the study you cited credits some 32,00 preganancies out of an estimated 51, 250 cases (and I went slightly above your 1/2 of 1.3 million cases)is not a 5% percent preganacy incidence it’s 63%.
now maybe I am off on in my calculations, but right away it’s obvious without doing the math there are problems.

Here’s the probability study 4008 women in a 3 year study — even if all of them got raped and pregnant 100% of the time that is still only 4008 and eight pregnancies — I think there are problems with this study and the problems are deep and apparently not so rare.

A 5% chance of pregnancy of the 51, 259 rapes yields 2562 pregnancies — I am not sure how one reconciles that with 32,000 pregnancies per year. So to get the numbers your are referencing — these women would have to experience multiple rapes with each having resulted in pregnancy.

But most importantly there has been a lot of skewing or rape nmbers upwards by various groups and bizaarre estimates about the number of women raped per miniute — I wouldn’t dount it for a minute if these high numbers aren’t skewed by those estimates. The manner in which these numbers are obtained is rather dubious enetrprise as the numbers and models are unverifiable.

Read the study, the data is based on a questionaire — not an actual track of rape incidents. S0 you ask meif 5% is rare, I say it is. And furthermore I am becoming increasing skeptical as interested parties continue to manipulate the numbers for the purpose of political hay making and worse — obtaining grants to engage in the same.

Wow, so you’re saying that the desire of liberals to engage with racial and sexual minority groups has nothing to do with the desire to engage with people different from themselves, and nothing to do with the desire to engage with conservatives. This is totally problematic because racial and sexual minority groups do not automatically share or reinforce the perspectives of white liberals:
– as a white liberal, talking to under-represented groups of people can be a devastating experience for me precisely because their perspectives can be so different from my own, both how they perceive our shared world and how they perceive me and my identity. There is no sense of reinforcement, it’s more like having a rug pulled out from under you over and over and it’s never an easy or fun experience.
– at the same time many members of under-represented groups of people ascribe to a set of values that aligns better with conservatives than liberals: they’re not just minorities, they’re also people with the same intellectual and emotional capacities as everyone else. Assuming that they’re liberal and using that as a reason not to engage with them directly is a mistake.
This whole article is so problematic because it separates out dicussions of “liberalism” and “conservatism” as ideologies belonging to groups of white people, and talks about minority groups as one big unified “other” that wags its tail at liberal policies like a pet dog.

Now I did try to find the number of US pregnancies. But I couldn’t locate that actual number. It was noted in the CDC but in the end they only provided the number of births.

4,000,000 births per annuum the number of pregnancies are probably higher. So I will be generous here let’s say the number of pregnancies is 4, 500,000. And the claim is made that 32,000 of those are the result of rape well, that pans out to about: 0.71% less than one percent — which is less than the five percent rate of pregnancies — even if that 32,000 number were correct, that is still rare. Because at 5% rate of preganancies resulting from rape — that number from the generous number of pregnancies I noted is about: 225,000. The numbers just don’t pan out.

I am not a very bright guy. But on the basis of what you have provided. This studies seems rather flawed.

I hope you have read the site info. I am not sure why the other respondent didn’t answer the questions. If he read the text, it’s fairly clear that father Donovan’s estimates are not based on a study but his own observations and Father Donovan to his credit states as much.

So your response to the numbers as dubious are probably well fonded as to a statistical analysis. There are so many interesdted parties tossing out numbers to advances causes as opposed to actual discussion and education. I haave paid a fairly heavy price for not towing ‘women get a free pass’ because they are women as they engage in rather spurious research and methods to redress some unrequited lobve or ancient wrong. Feminists forget that the roles were largely part of social contract in which they as honored beareres of a socities future were largely protected from the harshness of living. You don’t hear them clamoring to be part of the combat arms teams — but they are all too happy to slander and destroy the lives of others to get what they want — and it’s part of the price — well, I no longer buy into the diversity trap.

Notice that desppite the numbers of women in excutive teirs of the workplace — they were just as likely to be involved in malfeasance and other assundry ill behaviors as the men. The myth of that women are more ethical, more inclusive, etc. etc — just does not seem to be playing out all that well.

They want self reliance but they want government healthcare, they independence, but they think the government should pay for their contraception, they want control over their bodies but they don’t want to be held accountable if the get drunk and have multiple sexual encounters.

Whre these women? White and priviledged, they come out Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Vassar, Cornell — they want everything but to pay the price and they seem shocked that there is a price and worse taht anyone would deft their double standards.

I guess the good thing about celibacy is that it grees me up from the sexual politics — one of my areas of inadequate social skills.